Police targeted in Pakistan blasts

Four officers dead in two attacks in northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa region, a day after deaths of 17 people in bombing.

13 Jan 2011 10:55 GMT

Pakistani police have been repeatedly targeted in attacks by the local Taliban over the past three years [AFP]

Suspected fighters have targeted a police vehicle and a security checkpoint with bombs in northwest Pakistan, killing four officers and wounding nine others.

Three policemen were killed in the first attack on Thursday, when a remote-controlled bomb destroyed a vehicle carrying police and paramilitary forces in the Bannu district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, Rafique Khan, a local police official, said.

Another five security personnel were wounded in the attack, Khan said. He blamed local pro-Taliban fighters but offered no evidence to back up his claim.

These fighters with bases in Pakistan's northwest have carried out scores of attacks on police and army targets over the last three years.

In a separate attack in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province on Thursday, a bomb struck a checkpoint manned by tribal police in Bara, a town near the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing one officer and wounding four more, Iqbal Khan, a police official, said.

The attacks came a day after a suicide bomber killed at least 17 people, including security officers, in an attack on a police station and an adjacent mosque in the same region.

The bombing on Wednesday at the Miryan town police station in Bannu also wounded at least 13 other people, according to medical staff.

The bomber drove a car carrying explosives into the building killing police officers and paramilitary fighters.

The Pakistani Taliban immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

They said that the bombing was in response to US drone attacks in the country's northwest, from where the Taliban launch attacks within Pakistan and in Afghanistan.

The district of Bannu is located next to North Waziristan, widely believed to be a stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked fighters involved in attacks across the border in Afghanistan.

Over the past two years North Waziristan has been the site of scores of US drone-missile attacks targeting suspected Taliban fighters.